White garden

Awesome plowing job, guys!

Vita Sackville-West carefully planned her white garden, but we have one—of a sort—every winter. This year, a sizable snowfall came rather earlier than usual, and I suspect it may be a sign of a colder and snowier winter than we’ve had in a while. The Farmer’s Almanac said as much, and they’re generally on target (I think).


Drinks on the patio, anyone?

Like many in the northern half of the gardening world, I have a love/hate affair with snow. It’s very beautiful, and provides good protective covering for plants. As Allan Armitage posted on Garden Rant a couple weeks back, lack of snow cover is one of the difficulties of gardening in the south. As far as driving in the stuff and shoveling it? That’s where the hate comes in.


The pond is under here somewhere.

Nonetheless, the blanket of snow is one of the reasons I appreciate my lush summer garden all the more when it—almost magically—appears. In the dead of winter it’s occasionally hard to believe that a green and floriferous garden will ever re-emerge.


This is also why I swear by my indoor plants and try to pay proper attention to them even in summer, when I’m tempted to ignore them. Many of my housepants are flowering now. (I just don't get it when people diss houseplants. It really bugs me. Oh well.) The hyacinth buds are starting to come out and I’m already discarding my first batch of paperwhites. My two new amaryllis are also pushing up fat buds. I’ll be ready to bring up all the hyacinths from the root cellar in a week or so.


The sculpture in back has an elegant top dressing.

Sorry for this short little snow post—must shovel now!